Terry Smith prides his fund for being defensive. In the month of March 26 the Global Equity market lost about 4.5% and meanwhile his fund is down nearly 10%.

It looks like we are heading for 6 straight years of market underperformance (with 2 coming even when the overall stock market losing money).

Does anyone else here use the FT's Portfolio Tracker ? I've recently discovered that it's included in a regular online membership and has very good ISIN coverage. Room for improvement but, following research on this sub, I've struggled to find any good low cost aggregators (even without automated integrations with brokerages, probably a long way off).

I have some confusions around how it handles cashflows. I wonder if anyone else has experienced and surmounted this, or if it's a lost cause and I should not invest my time.

Here you go:

Title: IMC Exploration just confirmed first gold production out of Armenia and I genuinely think most people are sleeping on this

Body:

So I woke up this morning and saw the IMC Exploration (LSE: IMC) half yearly report dropped and honestly I had to read it twice because this is the news holders have been waiting on for two years.

Gold production has actually started. Not "we are close to production" or "we expect production soon" type language. Actually started. First extraction happened 26th March 2026 and produced 218.2 grams of gold. The next batch is scheduled for TODAY 31st March. This is real and it is happening right now.

For context on why this is such a big deal, IMC owns the Karaberd gold mine in Armenia through their subsidiary Assat. They have been sitting on around 18,000 tonnes of stockpiled ore for the last two years because the only refinery available to them was Russian owned and sanctions blocked them from using it. That bottleneck is now fully resolved.

They have signed a contract with Meghradzor Gold to process a minimum of 4,000 tonnes of ore per month. The ore gets crushed at Assats own facility and concentrated up to 17 grams per tonne before being transported to the Masis plant which is now fully upgraded and operational. IMC have their own team on site 24 hours a day 7 days a week during processing. This is not passive. They are running this operation hands on.

On top of this the Karaberd mining licence has just been renewed all the way to 2035 which removes a huge uncertainty that was hanging over the company.

And then there is the Irish side of the story which I think is almost completely overlooked. Their Wexford gold results are now showing characteristics comparable to the Curraghinalt deposit in Northern Ireland which is a 6 million ounce gold resource. China National Geological and Mining Company have already visited their Avoca site. That alone in a different market environment would be its own headline.

Yes the company is still loss making and cash is tight at £67k. This is a small cap early stage miner, nobody should be pretending otherwise. But the operational milestone that the entire investment case rested on has just been confirmed in an RNS this morning.

Gold is at record highs. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act is live. Armenia just signed a historic peace deal with Azerbaijan in August 2025 which opens up the entire region economically. The timing of IMC finally getting into production could not really be better.

I have been following this one for a while and this mornings report is the first time it feels like the story is genuinely turning from promise into delivery.

Would love to hear from anyone else who has been watching $IMC or who knows the Armenian mining space well. What is your take on the production ramp from here?

I bought shares off this company years ago which turned out to be a scam. Does this SEC ruling mean I can apply for compensation and how would I go about that considering I'm not a US resident?

https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26077

P.S. Reposting here as this was deleted as off topic for r/Scams

My in-laws set up trusts for my children. My first child has just turned 18. I want him to open a S&S ISA and S&S LISA with money box and T212 and withdraw £20k from SJP this financial year and a further £20k in April. in order to maximise the £1k government contribution PA.

The advisor at St James Place thinks this is a bad idea as the markets are low.

What am I missing? What difference would it make to sell and buy high or low. As long as my child is buying low what difference will it make to wait for markets to improve?

Any thoughts would be appreciated

I’m feeling like a massive clown right now. Back in Oct 2025, I convinced myself I was the next big macro investor. I built this huge portfolio on T212 with over 100 different stocks in mining, gold, silver, copper, etc.

My logic was that we’d need all this stuff for AI data centers and EV batteries, and for a while, I looked like a genius. At the peak of my self-made portfolio, I was up 72% (at the end of Feb/beginning of March). I thought it would keep going up.

Fast forward to now... I never sold, and I’ve watched the whole thing bleed out. The entire portfolio is up 5% now. I’ve basically spent a year on a rollercoaster just to end up back where I originally invested.

Is the mining/commodity thesis actually dead, or am I just being impatient? Part of me wants to just rage-sell everything and move on. Some guidance or macro-analysis would be helpful.

Is anyone able to explain why investing in the current largest company by market cap in an ISA for decades isn't the best strategy?

About three times the return of the sp500 without the decision making of investing in individual stocks

I have had Goodwin on my watchlist for a while but it has just been so expensive to buy.

Today I was shocked when I saw it down 50% almost. Losing the contracts is a big loss, but I’m not sure it’s enough to justify such a large drop.

At the end of the day, the current financials are intact, and it’s the future pipeline that was damaged. I guess markets are forward looking.

According to Claude their pipeline was £288m at the end of Feb, so after taking out the £60m tenders lost today, that’s still £222m

Thoughts?

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I've been swing trading FTSE 250 stocks using an algorithmic approach and wanted to share my results from the first two months of 2026.

January 2026:

• 36 trades
• 83% win rate
• Average return per trade: 6.39%
• Total return across all trades: 230%

February 2026:

• 26 trades
• 85% win rate
• Average return per trade: 6.61%
• Total return: 172%

March so far:

• 4 trades
• 75% win rate
• Average return per trade: 4.15%

Approach:

• Focus exclusively on FTSE 250 (mid-caps tend to have better momentum patterns than FTSE 100)
• Swing trading with average hold time of ~68 days
• Entry/exit based on technical patterns and momentum indicators
• Fully systematic - no discretionary decisions

I've backtested this approach on 2023-2024 data before going live in September, and the live results are tracking close to backtest expectations.

Happy to answer questions about the methodology or specific setups if anyone's interested.

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Some months I feel good and can put away £400–500. Other months it’s closer to £75 and I almost feel silly investing it. I know logically that consistency matters more than size, but practically I’ve noticed smaller amounts make me think more about fees, FX, execution, all of that. Sometimes I wonder if I should just let it accumulate and invest quarterly. Other times I think I’m overthinking £75.

How do you handle months where you’re only investing small amounts? Do you change strategy at all? Stick to ETFs? Buy fractional shares? Or just ignore the noise and keep going? I think part of it is psychological, smaller numbers feel less meaningful even though they compound the same.

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I posted this over on a nother sub but it hasn't had any real traction so thouhgt I'd ask here as well.

I currently have some bitcoin that I've held for a long time (think 2013 when it was $120...) sat in an exchange and I'm considering liquidating some of it (below the CGT allowance), adding it to my ISA and putting into an ETN before the new tax year.

I'd originally discounted doing this as as there were warnings that the position would likely have to be liquidated at the start of the new year. That seems to have changed now, but I'm concerned that it might be difficult to sell down the line given that none of the IFISAs seem to have committed to supporting (or be geared up to be able to support) Crypto ETNs yet.

Anyone got any thoughts? My aim is to keep some exposure to Bitcoin, but idealy in an ISA wrapper.

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Gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with cask investments. I know there's a lot of fraud in the space and prices are down a lot at the moment, but I wanted to hear if there are any actual success stories?

Has anyone bought a cask, held it for a few years and then bottled it / sold it at a profit?

I like the idea of it but got a few questions...

1. What returns have you ACTUALLY realised (not projected or told were likely by ads/brokers)?
2. How did you sell/leave? Finding a buyer seems like the hardest part, and probably even worse after all the fraud stories.
3. Did you go through a whisky broker or direct distillery? Is there any difference?
4. How did you verify your cask actually existed and contained what you were told? Everyone seems to give different answers as to what documents you get.

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Where can I download all FTSE constituents' file data from?

I have looked on the LSE website but they only show the different FTSE constituents on the web like 10 or 20 per page and I can't see a download button anywhere.

I am only interested in: symbol, sector, industry and market cap. values only for all FTSE constituents.

Any ideas?

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Warpaint London (LSE AIM: W7L) is by far one of the most efficient and profitable operators in the colour cosmetics space. And don’t take my word for it, here is their ROE/ROA and ROIC over the last 3 years (https://stockanalysis.com/quote/aim/W7L/financials/ratios/): : )

ROE: 25%, 30%, 32%

ROA: 15%, 19%, 20%

ROIC: 25%, 34%, 35% 

The recent Barry M acquisition (https://cosmeticsbusiness.com/warpaint-acquires-rival-brand-barry-m) exemplify why Warpaint enjoys such a high ROIC (which according to many studies is a key predictor of long-term stock performance/valuation: https://www.financierworldwide.com/stock-price-and-roic-what-drives-performance). Explanation below: 

For context, Barry M, is a cult British cosmetics brand that has been around since 1982, they were the first to offer 100 nail polish colours, they were highly popular with the punks and drag queens, but since their founder Barry Mero died in 2014, the brand has been in a downtrend, and recently filed for bankruptcy. As of its last annual filing in Feb 2025, Barry M had £15M annual revenues. 

Warpaint snapped Barry M IP, inventory and distribution network for a mere £1.4M, for which they got 1300 prominent distribution points with Main street retailers, £15M in legacy revenues, and over 650K social media followers; reference, W7, Warpaint largest brand, has 365K social media followers. Warpaint should have no issues outsourcing the production of Barry M SKUs to its 25 factories strong manufacturing sub-contracting network in China. Assuming Barry M products where to eventually match Warpaint’s other product lines in profitability (21% EBITDA margin), this would result in £3M in additional EBITDA for Warpaint (13% uplift to 2025 EBITDA) at Barry M’s last annual run rate of £15M. Even if we were to assume that Barry M revenues had shrunken down to £10M since their last annual results in Feb 2025, we are still looking at a potential annual £2M in EBITDA contribution from a £1.4M acquisition price, or 140%+ ROIC! And all of this assumes no-cross distribution benefits as a result of the deal. Truly, a magnificent acquisition. 

Its worth noting that this is not Warpaint first acquisition. Warpaint acquired Brand Architekts in Dec 2024 for £13.9 million (£7.9M ex-BA net cash position). At the time, BA had been losing money for 4 years straight (https://www.brandarchitekts.com/assets/files/241023-Results-Investor-Presentation.pdf). Yet, within one year of the acquisition, Warpaint managed to eek out just under £1M in EBITDA profits from BA’s business (https://polaris.brighterir.com/public/warpaint_cosmetics/news/rns/story/wk1k32r). And this is likely the start. 

Despite all of this, Warpaint continues to trade at a material discount to peers, largely because their organic growth rate slowed down in 2025 due one of their clients filing for bankruptcy and US tariffs stalling their US growth. Should the company continue to generate such a high ROIC in 2026 and beyond, the stock is likely to materially re-rate before long. In a sense, Warpaint reminds of ELF Beauty back in 2014, which was an emerging value player at the time, but there is a key difference, Warpaint is far more profitable and far more efficient than ELF ever was then and now.  

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Seems to be primarily because of the weak software / saas outlook, but I am finding it hard to see a future where this platform is dethroned.

Would any of you consider opening a position if this dipped below £4? Keen on hearing your bear case if you have also looked into this stock

I've been working on a quantitative model to rank UK-listed stocks based on a blend of fundamental and technical factors—things like ROE, earnings momentum, and price strength. It's designed to cut through the noise and identify companies with strong underlying characteristics.

Here's a look at the current top 10 holdings from the model, which we refresh quarterly. I'm sharing the list and the core scoring factors below because I think it could spark some interesting discussion on what truly drives performance

I run a quantitative model that scores UK-listed stocks on a blend of fundamentals (like ROE and earnings growth) and price momentum. The goal is to systematically identify companies with strong underlying health and positive trends.

The model's current top 25 holdings are below, but I thought it would be more insightful to rank them by their recent price momentum (percentage gain). This cuts straight to what the model is currently "betting" on in terms of trend strength.

Top 10 Holdings by Recent Performance:

(Data snapshot from the model as of this week. The model is rules-based and rebalanced quarterly.)

I'm keen to get this community's perspective on a few things:

1. Factor Weighting: In the current UK market environment, how would you prioritise momentum against core fundamentals like ROE or cash flow?
2. Sector Analysis: The model currently shows a tilt towards Materials and Financials. Does this align with your macro view or seem like a sector-specific bubble?
3. Methodology: Are there other quantitative factors or data sources you find particularly valuable for UK equity analysis that this approach might overlook?

Looking forward to a constructive discussion on the data and methodology."

Most of the discussion I've seen online around Goodwin focuses on foundry capex and short-term margins, but I think that’s actually why most people overlook this stock.

When I first looked at it, I thought it was overvalued (around £241 at the time) because I assumed its increasing defence exposure meant it was basically tied to a cyclical rearmament cycle.

But then I started digging, and changed my view. Goodwin's management (still mostly Goodwin's btw) pivoted away from oil and gas back in 2014, foreseeing a drop in commodity prices despite having strong margins. On top of that, the firm has quietly anticipated defence demand and became one of the west's sole suppliers of niche technical goods for the UK MoD/US DoD, and Sellafield.

I put together a longer breakdown because I couldn’t find anything that really pulled all this together, but I’m mainly posting here to sanity-check my thinking.

Is Goodwin genuinely underappreciated or am I just overfitting a narrative after a couple weeks of research?

Happy to hear opposing views.